ANCIENT AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS TO ca. 1500
by
Dr.
Susan J. Herlin
©
Revised edition, 2003
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
PART I. TEXT SUPPLEMENT
African Geography................................................................................................................. 3
MAP 1: India, USA,
China and Europe superimposed on African Continent........................... 5
MAP 2: Physical Features (Modern)....................................................................................... 6
MAP 3: Regional names (Map Quiz Version).......................................................................... 7
AFRICAN ROOTS OF HUMAN SOCIETY AND CULTURE......................................... 8
Scientific evidence for early human
ancestor and their way of life......................................... 8
MAP 4: Paleolithic
Africa.................................................................................................... 10
Prehistory: probable sequences of human
development in the Paleolithic............................ 11
Society,
economy, and culture in the Stone ages: Becoming Human................................. 13
CHART: Stone Age Chronologies........................................................................................ 17
CHART: The Late Stone Age Way of Life........................................................................... 18
MAP 5: Late Stone Age
Africa............................................................................................. 19
THE FOOD PRODUCTION REVOLUTION IN AFRICA............................................ 20
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NILE VALLEY.......................... 23
The Physical
and Cultural Environment of the Nile in Ancient Times............................... 23
The
Development of Irrigation, Writing, Religion and Monarchy....................................... 24
MAP 6: The Nile
Valley in Pharoanic times......................................................................... 26
Pharaonic
Egypt to ca.800 BCE....................................................................................... 27
Nubia and Kush in Pharaonic Times................................................................................. 30
CHRONOLOGY: The Nile Valley in Pharaonic Times........................................................ 31
MAP 7: Nubia
and Kush...................................................................................................... 32
Egypt and Its Neighbors:
the Impact of Egyptian Civilization: Issues and Evidence............. 33
MAP 8: Northern Africa in Classical Egyptian times............................................................. 36
WEST AFRICA IN ANTIQUITY..................................................................................... 37
MAP 9: Ethnolinguistic Map of West Africa......................................................................... 40
CHART: Chronology of Ancient West Africa........................................................................ 43
MAP 10: Northern Africa in Carthaginian Era..................................................................... 44
EARLY CIVILIZATIONS OF THE MAGHRIB: CARTHAGE....................................... 45
CHRONOLOGY: The Maghrib in Carthaginian and Roman Times...................................... 48
THE ADVENT AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY..................................................... 49
CHART: Chronology of Early Christianity............................................................................ 52
MAP 11: Christian North Africa.......................................................................................... 53
CHART: Chronology of West Africa: 800 BCE to ca.1600 CE............................................. 54
CHART: Chronology of North African Islam to 1517.......................................................... 56
INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY AND HISTORICAL
STUDIES........................... 58
What is History? How and Why is it Done? .................................................................... 58
History,
Historiography and Historical Theory................................................................... 60
Doing History:
Critical Reading and Critical Analysis......................................................... 61
PART
III. STUDY GUIDE......................................................................................................... 63
AFRICAN GEOGRAPHY
The
Continent now known as Africa is a very large landmass located to the south of
western Europe and to the southwest of what we now call the ‘Middle East.’ It is bordered in the north by the
Mediterranean Sea, in the east by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and in the
west by the Atlantic Ocean. The
Continent has many environments, ranging from the most arid of desert wastes to
tropical rain forest, savanna, vast swamps, and even snow-capped
mountains. The diverse flora and fauna
of these environments have supported a variety of human communities, which, in
turn have developed a correspondingly wide range of economic, social, cultural
and political strategies for survival.
Today
the Continent is divided politically into fifty independent countries, ranging
in population from Nigeria, with about 150 million, to Mauritania, Niger or
Namibia whose citizens number fewer than 5 million. In size the differences are equally as great, with countries
ranging in size from tiny, Connecticut-sized Gambia to giant Sudan, whose
territory equals that of the entire United States east of the Mississippi
River.
Over time the regions of the Continent have
acquired commonly applied names, such as Sub-Saharan, North, West, Southern,
East, Northeast (or Horn), Central, and Equatorial. Knowledge of these regional designations, along with the
important physical features and modern country boundaries is necessary for
understanding materials written about the history, societies, politics or
cultures of the Continent. [MAP 1]
The
geography of the Africa has played an important role not only in the history of
the peoples of the Continent, but history of all humans as well. All of us belong to a species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the remote
ancestors of whom lived in the African tropical savannas as early as 3 million
years ago. Although, as is true in the
rest of the world, African landform and climate have changed over the last 3
million years, we will first consider the modern geography and climate.
Africa
is a very large continent. Large
enough, in fact, to contain the United States, China, India, and Argentina combined.
[MAP 2] It is about 5,500 miles across
the Continent, both east to west and north to south. Africa is the most tropical of continents, being practically
bisected by the Equator. While
virtually any kind of climate or topographical feature can be found somewhere
on the African continent, the majority of land is either desert or savanna
(open plains). Substantial rain forest
(so-called 'jungle') covers the lowlands near the Equator. However, the majestic snow-capped peaks of
Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro are also located near the Equator. The Continent has four major river systems:
the Nile, the Niger, the Congo or Zaire, and the Zambezi. [MAP 3]
As
is the case in other world regions, human history in Africa is closely linked
to the favorable distribution of natural resources--particularly good soils and
an adequate water supply. The savanna
regions of eastern Africa are literally home to the human species. Other well-watered savanna regions of the
Continent, especially the Sudannic regions north of the great equatorial
forest, have long supported diverse populations of farmers, herders, crafts
people and traders. And, of course, the
fertile Nile valley was the cradle of one of the earliest civilizations known,
that of the ancient Egyptians.
The Continent can be divided into broad
climate zones according to patterns of rainfall and temperature. In the tropical forest or equatorial zone,
which covers the lowlands of central Africa, the climate is similar year round,
with warm, humid conditions and nearly daily rainfall. The dense forests and lush vegetation of
this zone has historically made farming very difficult, and thus kept
population densities low. The prevalence
of the tse-tse fly prevented the raising of cattle. Thus, fishing, hunting and gathering, and trade have historically
sustained regional economies. Equatorial mountain terrain provides an exception
to the rule of tropical rain forest.
Mountain slopes and valleys above 5,000 feet have environments that are
more temperate; in the higher elevations, even alpine in character. The equatorial mountain zone is in the
eastern part of the region, in modern day Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya and
Tanzania.
Both
to the north and south of the equatorial forest zone the tree cover gradually
thins out as annual rainfall declines.
In the resulting tropical savannas rain occurs seasonally, alternating
with increasingly lengthy dry seasons.
In the open country days are hotter and nights cooler than in the forest
year round. Even though soils are often
poor and rainfall erratic, nonetheless this open country is more suitable for
farming than either dense forest or desert; and can support livestock such as
goats and cattle. Tropical savanna
farming communities are historically the most typical of African settlement
patterns. The indigenous savanna
crops—millets, black-eyed peas, yams, palm oil and fruits—are still important
to the diets of many rural people.
The
further one gets from the Equator the longer the dry season, until one reaches
lands where there is no rainy season at all.
In these deserts, which now cover about one-third of the Continent,
water comes almost exclusively from underground sources (or from rain that fell
elsewhere and comes down the river in the form of annual floods, as in
Egypt. Thus agriculture can only be
sustained in river valleys or in oases.
Egyptian civilization was based on the exceptionally fertile alluvial
soils of the Nile River, which, for the last 4500 years or so, has flowed
through one of the most arid parts of the western Saharan desert. Deserts are hot during the day and cold
during the clear starry nights. Most desert dwellers are nomadic herders, since
animals must be regularly moved to take advantage of sparse grass and brush.
As
one approaches either the northern or southern-most coasts of the Continent the
climate becomes more temperate, with winter and summer seasons and periods of
rainfall throughout the year, much the same as is the case in southern parts of
the United States. Here the agriculture
follows seasons familiar to us, and the climate supports crops and animals that
are similar to other regions around the Mediterranean Sea, such as wheat,
olives, grapes; sheep, goats and cattle.
Although
there are people living in mountain valleys, along large lakes or seacoast, in
swamps or on islands, the majority of African peoples live in the tropical
savannas, the Nile Valley or Mediterranean climate zones in either the far
north or the far south. It is the people
of these three major environments who have, therefore, been the central
characters in the long, interesting and very diverse history of the Continent,
taken as a whole.
MAP 1 India, USA, China and Europe superimposed
on African Continent
MAP 2: Physical Features (Modern)
MAP 3: Regional names (Map Quiz Version)
AFRICAN ROOTS OF HUMAN SOCIETY AND
CULTURE
The
African continent, and particularly sub-Saharan Africa, has an extremely
lengthy period of human prehistory.
Over one hundred years ago Charles Darwin hypothesized, on the basis of
the limited evidence available at that time, that Africa would prove to be the
homeland of the human species. In the
last fifty years researchers in fields as diverse as archaeology and genetics
have convincingly demonstrated the correctness of Darwin’s thesis.
Recent
archaeological research indicates that early proto-humans, called hominids,
were making and using stone tools in northern and eastern Africa three million
or more years ago. Clear evidence for
similar developments outside Africa does not appear until about one million
years ago. Thus it seems likely that
the first two million or so years of human development in took place on the
continent of Africa. Recent genetic research further suggests that all living
members of our species, that is, Homo
sapiens sapiens, may have had either a common grandmother (or grandfather,
depending on the researcher), ten thousand times removed. This ancestress/ancestor of us all probably
lived in Africa between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.
All
but the last 10,000 or so years of human history belong entirely to the era
known broadly as the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age). The beginning of the Paleolithic is dated from when the hominid
populations of Africa started to regularly make rudimentary tools from
intentionally shaped stones for use in their daily lives. The “stone ages” (Old and New) ended when ancient humans began to use metals, such
as copper or iron, as their principal tool making materials. Metal decorations, tools and weapons began
to appear about 8,000 years ago in some places, but were not in general use,
even in the ‘civilized world’ of the time, until about 3,000 years ago. Thus the stone ages, from the standpoint of
time, constitute the bulk of human history.
Scientific
Evidence for Early Human Ancestors and Their Ways of Life
Although
stone tools give their names to eras of human prehistory and provide a major
means for tracing its development, it is certain that materials other than
stones were used as tools by hominids and early humans in their daily
lives. However, since most of those
made of organic materials have decayed beyond trace, they cannot be used as
evidence by the archaeologists or other scientists interested in pre-history. It is very likely that the earliest hominid
tools will forever remain unknown, as they were either natural objects (sticks,
vines, rocks) or were so little changed from natural objects that they can’t be
distinguished in fossil remains.
Archaeologists
and paleo-anthropologists, the principal researchers into our stone age past,
use fossil remains of humans and other animals, tools, seeds, even pollen, as
well other data from the environment, such as soils and rock strata, to
reconstruct the ways of life of the peoples who used them. They also use
indirect evidence in their research, including fossil remains from other
related species, such as chimpanzees, and the data supplied by observing the
ways of life of living populations of apes. Some information is gathered as
well from contemporary human societies that still follow what are presumed to
be the ancient gathering and hunting way of life. Data derived from comparative anatomy, blood, protein and DNA
research are also used in the search for understanding about our remote African
ancestors.
Dating
of evidence plays a significant role in archaeological research, since it is
impossible to trace changes without knowing the relative sequence of fossils
and related evidence over time. Dating
methods continue to improve. However,
even the most sophisticated techniques for recovering and dating materials from
antiquity do not give us the story of human development. All the evidence must be analyzed and
interpreted using a unifying theoretical framework. The basic interpretive
framework in use today is evolutionary theory.
Charles Darwin and his contemporaries in England and other Western
countries first developed it more than a hundred years ago. Evolutionists hypothesize that living species
are the product of thousands, even millions of years of incremental genetic
changes. That, in essence, if you take
the ancestry of any living thing back far enough it will merge with all other
living things.
MAP 4: Paleolithic Africa
Prehistory:
probable sequences of human development in the Old Stone Age.
The
stone ages were not static. Popular
expressions such as 'living in the stone age' or 'stone age man' are unhelpful
when they are based on the false assumption that the ancestral human way of
life remained the same throughout the millions of years known collectively as
the stone ages. Changes in technology
and lifestyle during all these stone ages from the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)
through the Neolithic (New Stone Age) are easily demonstrated. Stone Age 'toolkits' [1]
differed from period to period as the peoples who made and used them developed
both physically and culturally over time.
Specialists subdivide the stone ages into periods, such as ’early,’
‘late,’ and ‘new,’ to indicate the significant differences that developed over
time.
The
longest period in human pre-history encompasses the era known as the early
Paleolithic (early Old Stone Age), which lasted from the time of the earliest
recognizably proto-human beings to the advent of our species (i.e., from about
3 million BCE[2] until about
200,000 BCE). The first recognizable stone tools appeared in this period. Most of the fossil remains connected with
the early Paleolithic are African. The
first phase of this era (ca. 3 million to 1 million BCE) is named
Olduwan--after Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where the fossils remains associated
with the earliest tools were first discovered.[3]
Among the tool makers of Olduvai was the human ancestral species called Homo
Habilis, whose members were fairly small in stature, walked upright, had fairly
small brains, and lived an average of only 20 years or so.
Olduwan
hominids made pebble or chopper tools, which were probably used to fashion
wooden digging sticks, to butcher already dead wild animals, and to scrape
hides or soften leather. These early hominids began to develop the foraging
(gathering and hunting) way of life that came to separate them from their
primate cousins, the various species of apes.
Cultural and physical changes occurred very slowly in the early
Paleolithic because the total hominid populations were small, living in very
small groups scattered across the then vast tropical African savannas.
The
second phase of the early Paleolithic (c. 1 million to 200,000 BCE) is called
the Acheulian, after its typical industry that is named for a typesite in
southern France. Acheulian industries
are distinguished by more sophisticated stone tools which gradually became
sharper and more effective. Tasks which
had been accomplished with the older technology could now be done better, plus
the new ‘hand axes’ were good for digging.
These industries were the work of Homo
erectus (and perhaps other species).
They had larger and differently organized brains than their Homo habilis ancestors. This enabled them to colonize favorable
environments throughout the 'Old World.’[4]
In
the Acheulian period cultural changes began occurring with somewhat greater
frequency. This may have been because developing brain and speech capacities
gave homo erectus the ability to
transmit information more effectively both to group members and to offspring—thus
making possible the accumulation of knowledge over time. Also, there was probably a significant
overall population increase, since improved communication and tools also meant
more reliable food supplies. Of course,
not all populations changed at the same pace or in the same way. This depended upon environmental, cultural
and communications factors specific to each.
After
200,000 BCE regional specialization of tools appears for the first time, again
in Africa. Regional specialization
describes the move from the production of generic, all-purpose tools, to tose
designed for more specific tasks, such as trapping animals specific to a
particular environment. These innovations were the work of Homo sapiens and/or Homo
sapiens sapiens. Both groups were skilled and versatile enough to begin to
move into environmentally more difficult territories, from temperate Europe and
Asia to tropical rain forest Africa. To
do this they adapted their existing tool kits--employing new materials and
devising distinctive styles, some of which we even recognize as artistic
qualities as well as functional ones.
The status of Homo sapiens,
the species known as 'Rhodesiensis' in Africa and 'Neanderthal' in Europe,
whose members had physical characteristics very close to those of modern
humans, is currently under debate. It
is not known how populations of Homo
sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens related to each other, or why Homo sapiens disappeared. What is known is that all living humans
belong to one species, Homo sapiens
sapiens. .
As had been true from the beginning,
change in the later Paleolithic can be linked to climatic factors, specifically
to movement of glaciers in northern Europe and changes in rainfall levels in
southern Europe and Africa. Climatic
cycles alone, however, do not explain the accelerated pace of change. In the case of Africa experts have
hypothesized that more dense populations, made possible by more abundant food
supplies during wet phases, used their greater collective brain power to develop
innovative means of coping with the harsher conditions prevalent in the drier
times that followed.
Beginning
around 200,000 new methods for making stone implements began to appear in some
parts of Africa. The tools produced by
Homo sapiens and/or early Homo sapiens sapiens were thinner,
sharper, more accurately made. They
display a greater variety of shapes enabling their owners to perform a wider
variety of tasks. In the northern part
of Africa large, stemmed projectile points, such as arrowheads, distinguish the
regional industry called Mousterian. In
the southern savannas more triangular-shaped points characterized the
Fauresmith tool kit. Also, human groups
began to tackle the difficult forest environment. These pioneer forest-dwellers departed from the traditions of
their savanna cousins to develop the tools necessary for wood working and
digging which weren't needed on the more open plains. The earliest specialized African forest industry is called Sangoan.
By
about 30,000 BCE Homo sapiens sapiens
had become the only human creature on the planet. With the introduction of
'hafting,' that is attaching wooden shafts to stone implements, people could
make such things as spears and axes.
Techniques for finishing, sharpening and shaping stones continued to
improve as well, with communities in each environmental region adapting both
tools and styles more and more precisely to the needs of their own locale.
From about 20,000 BCE, there are further
refinements in stone technology. Very
specialized tools appeared, including arrowheads, fishhooks, grindstones, and
awls. These most refined of stone
implements have the generic name 'microlithic.' [5] This era of the late Paleolithic also saw
the development of complex composite tools such as bows and arrows. As well, fishing equipment, including boats,
and even pottery appeared in some environmental niches. As tools became more
specialized and finely made, local variations, including stylistic ones, became
more and more the rule.
By the Late Stone Age virtually the entire
now-inhabited world had been occupied by human foraging communities. In various
different regions of the world (including different parts of Africa), late
Paleolithic people themselves probably were developing some of the distinctive
(but superficial from a species perspective) physical characteristics, such as
skin color, hair texture and eye-shape, which we associate with modern
‘races.’ On the cultural side, the
earliest roots of modern language families can be traced back to communities
living this long ago as well.
From
the standpoint of African history the most important development of the late
Stone Age was the emergence of more settled (‘sedentary’) societies. These probably developed first along the
banks of the Upper Nile in the Cataracts region, in modern day southern Egypt
and northern Sudan (ancient Nubia).
Evidence of barley harvesting there dates from as early as 16,000
BCE. The ability to make greater use of
abundant wild grains, probably coupled with greater exploitation of aquatic
resources, led to a more settled existence for some people. These more sedentary peoples were a part of
what is now known collectively as the African Aquatic Culture/Tradition. This way of life spread from the Upper Nile
into a much larger area of Africa during the last great wet phase of African
climate history, which began about 9,000 and peaked about 7,000 BCE. The higher rainfall levels of the period
created numerous very large shallow lakes across what are now the arid southern
borderlands of the Sahara desert.
Inhabitants of shore communities crafted microlithic tools to exploit a
marine environment: fishing and trapping aquatic animals. This provided abundant food supplies,
particularly high in protein and supported the earliest known permanent
settlements. Culturally and
linguistically related peoples ancestral to modern Black Africans established
settlements throughout this vast, ancient great lakes area. It is theorized that they spoke the mother
Nilo-Saharan[6] tongue. Sophisticated water-related technologies
supported not only the development of settled communities, but also the
invention of things like pottery, which were formerly thought to be associated
exclusively with the Food Production Revolution[7]
of the later New Stone Age, or Neolithic.
While the African aquatic tradition itself lasted only until the
beginning of the modern drier period, around 3,000 BCE, its legacy has been
felt ever since.
Society,
Economy, and Culture in the Stone Ages: Becoming Human
The
preceding discussion has emphasized developments in technology and physiology
as a way of understanding the changes that constitute our human
prehistory. However, to answer the
question, "How did we come to be the distinctive species we now are?” we
must go beyond just chronicles of stones and bones. It is only by asking questions about how our hominid ancestors
actually lived that we can understand the roots of later societies and cultures
developed by our Homo sapiens sapiens
ancestors. In other words asking such
basic questions are critical to our achieving a fuller understanding of
ourselves and our species in all its diversity.
As it happens, until fairly recently basic
questions about human origins were usually asked by male scientists and
scholars. They tended to interpret the
fossils and other evidence in ways that emphasized hunting (a presumed male
activity) in explaining the origins of such distinctively human traits as
reflective thinking, myth making, tool using and society building. Hunting was assumed to have been in practice
for 99% of human prehistory and thus to have provided the ‘master behavior
pattern’ of the human species.
Research
by both men and women in the last few decades has raised serious questions
about the effectiveness of the 'hunting model' as a tool for understanding the
socio-cultural evolution of the human species.
These researchers relied on a principal called 'behavioral
continuity.’ This deceptively simple
concept asserts that new ways always grow out of and build onto existing
ones. Recent studies also draw from
biological research to emphasize the proposition that 'evolutionary success is
reproductive success.'[8] Use of these analytical tools has made it
clear that women were at least as central as men to the process of creating our
distinctive human species. And,
further, that 'gathering and not hunting was the initial food-providing
behavior that distinguished ape from
human.'[9]
Before
we go further, it is important to stress that Homo sapiens sapiens is a
fundamentally social animal. No humans
are born, grow up, reproduce and survive into old age alone. It has been said that the proper unit for
humanity is not the individual, but the pair (man and woman), because this is
the theoretical minimum necessary to carry on the species. Of course, at a practical level, one pair is
not viable all alone, either. Such a
pair had to be raised to adulthood before being able to reproduce—and neither of
them could possess fertility problems, or get sick and die before at least a male
and female offspring were produced. We
are also culture dependent; that is, each of us must be taught how to be human,
how to behave, speak, and think like a human.
Last, of course, each person learns to be human in a time and place
specific manner, by means of a particular language and all the cultural
elements that come with it. There are,
in other words, no generic humans, although there is the human species, which
is distinctive from even its nearest genetic relatives among the apes. Recent research suggests that it was the
development of group foraging, specifically gathering of plants and small
animals to feed a small group that formed the basis for the rich physical and
cultural development of our social species.
Hominid
gathering was specifically different from ape feeding practices in that it
involved using tools for collecting a quantity of food that was often carried
some distance for consumption and sharing.
This was a departure from the apes' 'pluck and eat' technique, in which
the weaned young were left to find their own food. Adult female hominids, however, not only used tools to obtain
food for themselves, but also to feed their children, who unlike ape offspring,
could not provide adequate food for their own survival until they were near
puberty. Hunting, according to this
model, emerged rather late in human evolutionary history as a specialized form
of gathering.
In
this interpretation of early hominid history, the first tools would have been
only slightly modified natural objects, such as a stick for digging edible
roots, or a crude container to transport food to a safe place for sharing with
children and siblings. Among the
earliest inventions, then, would surely have been a baby sling, to enable
mothers to gather and carry food while still carrying their nursing infants.[10] A child's survival depended upon its
mother's ability to carry it great distances for several years; her skill in
finding and gathering food; and her ability to space infants, to feed weaned
offspring and maintain social ties with at least her siblings, and possibly her
mate and some of his siblings (for protection, food sharing, and comfort).
Children were dependent on adults until they could walk long distances (about
puberty)--and had learned the skills to enable them to locate, identify, gather
and process available food using handmade tools.
Males
also gathered. After all they too were
carried by their mother, fed and taught by her until they could do for
themselves. Thus they would have had to learn from her effective techniques of
food gathering and food sharing.
Females, it is theorized, probably preferred to mate with friendly
males, who were successful at food gathering and were willing to share food. In fact, both sexes must have been able to
care for young, protect themselves from predators, mate, and use tools. Both men and women needed to move freely
about the environment in order to exploit available resources widely
distributed through space and time. It
is this range of behaviors--the overall behavioral flexibility of both
sexes--that, according to the reproductive success model was the primary
ingredient of the early hominids' successful adaptation to their tropical
savanna environment, and which thus ultimately provided the basis for our uniquely
human development.
Let
us reconsider then, the chronology of evolution in the Stone Ages from a
social, economic, and ideological as well as a technological and physiological
perspective. Through the millennia of
the early Paleolithic, small hominid populations developed a way of life, which
exploited the resources of the tropical savannas of northern and eastern
Africa. They used their slightly larger
brain capacity and their ability to walk long distances on two legs to develop
techniques for gathering vegetable foods and processing them. Like their chimpanzee cousins, they probably
also ate small animals. In order to
perpetuate themselves they had to rear dependent offspring to adulthood and
teach them how to survive. This required knowledge acquired from parents and
cooperation with fellow hominids--probably initially those with a close genetic
relationship to them, for example siblings who had been raised together, played
and gathered together and formed emotional ties to each other.
For
the earliest millennia there is no evidence of hominid encampments. Small groups of adults and children may have
simply slept in the nearest available sheltered place. Change was very slow, but the emerging
foraging way of life was sufficient for survival, and permitted periodic
innovations, which were widely adopted.
The only innovations that are clear to us from the archaeological record
are those of stone tools, but these inventions could only have happened in a context
of social and reproductive success within living communities.
By
the second phase of the Paleolithic (Acheulian era) significant changes had
occurred in both technology and physiology.
Physically, the ancestral stock is getting much closer to the modern
one--so much so that it is designated by the genus homo, as in Homo erectus. Tools are a bit more varied, probably allowing Homo erectus to process a wider variety
of vegetables and butcher (but still not kill) large game. Fire comes into use in this era. Campsites appear, so Homo erectus must have developed larger communities than those of
the preceding era. This in turn implies
the development of more complex rules for getting along. Because all innovation consists in
recombining existing elements with perhaps a new idea or technique, these
larger groups must have grown out of the existing ones, perhaps now including
mates of related adults, as well as their pre-pubescent children. Certainly, with more individuals interacting
and more effective communication, more complex rules of behavior would have
been devised. Although the experts do
not agree on this, it seems likely that Homo
erectus had better developed speech capabilities than her predecessors, a
very important factor in the growth of distinctively human societies and
associated cultures.
With
the emergence of Homo sapiens (sapiens), again in Africa, between
200,000 and 60,000 years ago, the social and technological skills of our
ancestors began to develop ever more rapidly.
As we have seen, more specialized tools were devised to cope with a new
range of environments. Tools for actual
hunting as we know it were produced, perhaps providing the initial spur to a
conscious division of labor by gender, with men forming the groups necessary to
track and kill large animals, while women defended camps and continued to
provide the bulk of the basic diet of plants and small animals. Shelters were constructed. Fishing was invented. Some campsites in particularly well-watered
areas were occupied for long periods of time.
Overall population increased.
Presumably foraging groups, called bands, by anthropologists, were approaching the size (about 30-75
people) which is still characteristic of surviving gatherer-hunter
societies. The beginnings of art, found
in cave shelters, suggests that people were concerned with beauty and the
meaning of things--that is, with what we would now call science and
religion. This in turn suggests that
these concerns are fundamental to our survival and development as humans.
The
achievements of Homo sapiens sapiens
were built on those of its hominid predecessors. They inherited the basic physiology, economic, social and
cultural skills necessary to human existence.
Child-rearing, pair-bonding, social support for children and adults, the
providing of food, tools, shelter, artistic and spiritual or symbolic concerns
were all being dealt with in ways which we recognize as ancestral, that is, as
fundamentally human. With the advent of
modern human (our species) such things as cosmetics, poison (and herbs for
healing), theology (ritual burials), arts (painting, singing, dancing, and
storytelling), decoration (jewelry and decoration of living sites) all very
quickly appeared. With the development
of the African Aquatic Tradition settled life enters the picture, and such
truly modern concerns as property rights, home maintenance, food storage,
housekeeping and garbage disposal had to be dealt with. With the development of larger, long-term
settlements, social methods had to be devised to cope with issues of conflict
and cooperation in communities whose resident population numbered in the
hundreds rather than the tens. Thus the
elaboration of kinship and marriage arrangements surely dates at least from
this era. The advent of settlements may
have also contributed to an even more strongly developed sex division of
labor. It is also in this context that
the seeds of plant and animal domestication were doubtless sown, since
according to some experts, garbage piles may have helped the process of
movement towards dependence on food production along.
STONE AGE CHRONOLOGIES. AFRICA.
|
PERIOD [BD] {BD=before now} |
CLIMATE |
SPECIES |
CULTURE |
|
4,500 |
Beginning
of current dry era for Sahara |
Modern
genetic variations.
|
Old Kingdom Egypt. Neolithic widespread
north of forest. |
|
6,000 |
Gradual
ending of wet phase in the north |
Modern
genetic variations. |
Neolithic (New Stone Age): early Nile
Valley civilization |
|
9,000 |
Humid
phase |
Modern.
Earliest roots of modern languages. |
African aquatic culture. First sedentary communities, based on
fishing. |
|
40,000 |
Arid phase |
Homo sapiens sapiens. All modern
humans. |
Microlithic tools. (Late era of
Paleolithic) |
|
200,000 |
Variable |
Homo
sapiens. Near modern-sized brain, speech capabilities. |
Tools
adapted to specific environments: Sangoan, Fauresmith. Mousterian. (Middle
era of Paleolithic) |
|
1,000,000 |
Variable |
Homo
erectus. Larger, reorganized brain. Pre-modern speech organs. |
Acheulian. Camps. Fire. Hunting. Early
era of Paleolithic/ |
|
2-3,000,000 |
Variable |
Homo Habilis. Bipedalism. |
Olduwan. Baby slings, digging sticks.
Scavenging. Early era of Paleolithic. |